In Sunday’s (10/2) New York Times, composer John Adams writes, “Idealistic, fantastic, grotesque, violent, tender, sarcastic, confrontational, confessional, the symphonies of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) are among the most profoundly autobiographical of all composed music. ‘I have written into them, in my own blood, everything that I have experienced and endured,’ he confided to a friend after finishing the Second Symphony. … For those who desire a more manageable overview of this artist’s extraordinary life and work, Jens Malte Fischer’s ‘Gustav Mahler’ (translated from the German by Stewart Spencer) is a good place to start. At 700-plus pages, Fischer’s book is no bagatelle either, but it is the work of a sympathetic writer who takes pains to establish the historical and cultural milieu that informs Mahler’s music. … [Fischer] tends to steer clear of the musically technical in favor of a more generalized discussion … A serious book about Mahler that assumes its reader will not want musical examples cannot do justice to its subject. … Nonetheless, Fischer is a thoughtful writer, and his essay on the Eighth Symphony, the so-called ‘Symphony of a Thousand,’ in particular is both admiring and skeptically cleareyed.”
Posted October 4, 2011
